RFK Jr. isn't hiding his plans for vaccines. Democrats say it will cost lives.

Politico

15 hours ago

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. isn't shading his big plans for the country's vaccine safety system anymore.
The health secretary and longtime vaccine skeptic pledged during his Senate confirmation earlier this year to leave that alone. But at a House health panel hearing Tuesday, Kennedy said there was ample reason to worry some vaccines aren't safe and gave no ground to Democrats who pointed out that most scientists and public health experts vehemently disagree.
'How can you mandate – which effectively is what they do — these products to healthy children without knowing the risk profile?' Kennedy said in explaining why he earlier this month fired 17 members of a CDC vaccine advisory panel and replaced them with eight new members, many of them skeptical of vaccine safety.
The hearing was officially about President Donald Trump's fiscal 2026 budget proposal for the Department of Health and Human Services, but Kennedy's testimony came after he rolled back guidance for healthy adults and children to get Covid shots and purged the outside vaccine experts. Some Democrats wanted to focus more on those decisions than Trump's plan to cut the HHS budget by a quarter.
They pointed out that studies have consistently upheld vaccine safety and predicted Kennedy's moves would contribute to vaccine skepticism and cost lives.
'It's clear to me that the vast majority of scientists and medical professionals think your views on vaccines are dangerous,' said New Jersey's Frank Pallone, the top Democrat on the Energy and Commerce Committee. 'The science is not on your side. I just really think people are going to die as a result of your actions.'
After that, things got hot. Kennedy accused Pallone of abandoning people injured by vaccines because of pharmaceutical company campaign contributions.
The top Democrat on the Energy and Commerce Health Subcommittee, Diana DeGette of Colorado, raised a point of order, saying Kennedy had impugned Pallone's integrity and needed to take back his accusation.
Kennedy retracted it, but temperatures remained high. Questioned by Democrat Robin Kelly of Illinois about his decision to stop recommending Covid vaccination to pregnant women — a move criticized by doctors' groups — Kennedy didn't give an inch.
'We are no longer recommending it because there is no science supporting the recommendation,' he said, adding that 'study after study shows adverse effects.' One, he said, had found increased risk of miscarriage.
Public health experts, including those HHS has cited, say that's not the case.
But Kennedy argued that many of the experts on which the government has relied, including those he fired from the vaccine advisory panel, were 'rife with conflicts of interest' with drug companies and had 'committed multiple acts of malpractice.'
The new panel of Kennedy-appointed advisers will begin their first meeting tomorrow at the headquarters of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta. They'll review a vaccine preservative, thimerosal, Kennedy has long wanted banned, Covid shots Kennedy has said are the 'deadliest vaccines ever made,' as well as the measles vaccine he has suggested causes autism.
Kennedy offered none of the conciliatory tone on vaccines he did when he was seeking the top job at the Department of Health and Human Services or even in more recent Congressional hearings, at which he half-heartedly endorsed measles vaccines.
Rep. Kim Schrier (D-Wash.) accused Kennedy of lying to Sen. Bill Cassidy, the chair of the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, about his intentions on vaccine policy.
Cassidy was the deciding vote on Kennedy's confirmation at the committee level, and the Louisiana Republican said he agreed to vote for Kennedy only after he promised not to upend the nation's decision-making process on vaccines.
Kennedy told Schrier he never promised Cassidy he wouldn't make changes to the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices and a Cassidy spokesperson told POLITICO the senator 'has said publicly that the agreement was about the ACIP process, not the staffing of ACIP.'
But Cassidy, in a post to X last night, decried Kennedy's decision to replace the advisory panel members and said the new ones Kennedy had chosen didn't have the right experience for the job. He asked Kennedy to delay the meeting and appoint new members.
Schrier, who's a pediatrician, described to Kennedy in graphic ways the effects of some vaccine-preventable diseases in children.
'They cough so hard, they vomit, they run out of air, they break ribs, and if you don't catch it before two weeks, antibiotics don't even work,' she said about the effects of whooping cough in older children.
But some Republican lawmakers defended Kennedy for his willingness to challenge conventional wisdom to improve American health outcomes that are among the worst among wealthy countries.
'Thank you again for thinking outside the box. That's what it takes,' said Rep. Gus Bilirakis (R-Fla.) about Kennedy's support for drugmakers' incentives to develop drugs for rare diseases that affect children.
Rep. Kat Cammack, another Florida Republican, said Kennedy was 'a disruptor,' adding: 'That's what we need in these times because so many people, especially in Congress, want to maintain the same broken status quo.'
Kelly Hooper contributed reporting.